My (live) Recruitment Story!
 

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Pre-Rush ideas :)
 

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Your strong suit - knowing lots of girls in the chapters.
Your weak suit - you can't help but go in with reputations floating around in your mind.
Depending on your school, being a junior may or may not be a huge deal, but it sounds like you've done everything you can to combat that - lots of recs and legacy forms. As you know from reading GC, that is no guarantee, but if it's not a huge Greek system it could get you invited back once as a courtesy. It depends on their interpretation of what "special attention" means.

Best of luck to you!

Legacies are an organization thing, not a campus thing. It may be that your recruitment registration form asked about aunts/cousins, but that has absolutely no bearing on the membership selection policies of individual organizations.

good luck izzygirl!

The Panhellenic form may ask about any relation because some sororities do consider nieces to be legacies and others don't. Since you said your university is in an area of the country where Greek life is not as popular (i.e. there's not tons of legacies), the particular chapter may wish to apply their National's legacy policy to nieces. I won't claim to know the exact legacy policy of every NPC, but I am sure none of them guarantee a bid to legacies; it's something along the lines of a "courtesy invite to first invitational round" and "special consideration". Or perhaps Greeks on your campus refer to nieces and cousins of members as "legacies" colloquially speaking, but they do not have to apply their National's legacy policy to them.

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Just so you understand that depending on the group, this may not be a written, official policy. Your aunt should check and see what her organization's current policy is.

I don't know how the person in the office of Greek Life put it, but it is not their place to weigh in on or make blanket statements about legacy policies. Each group decides that individually. "There's a chance your aunt's sorority may have a policy that makes you a legacy" - fine. "Oh you are a legacy because of your aunt!" - not fine.

Haha okay then. Well either way I'm not too concerned. If I am considered a legacy at that particular house because of my aunt, then great. If not, I'll live! Thanks for all your various input. We will just have to see.

It's totally not something I'm about to stress over. :)

Nieces are legacies with Alpha Xi Delta. That one I can give you. For the others, you're on your own.

Kappa does not consider nieces as legacies. I swear I think I saw a thread about this topic somewhere here on GC where the national legacy policies were discussed.

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I feel like I'm being http://snltranscripts.jt.org/03/pics/03rdowner3.jpg but honestly, even at schools that aren't very competitive, girls occasionally get released from all groups and/or don't get bids to a sorority. Please don't go into it with the above mindset or it might really backfire on you. I know you've been there for a couple years, but you don't know the inner workings of the sororities and membership selection until you're actually in one.

I agree with 33girl don't count on always having parties to attend. I would consider my campus not to be competitive at all. I also have statistics for the last 10 years from formal recruitment. Every year there have always been a few girls released by all chapters, less now that we have RFM but still always a few.

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QFP.

What's QFP? Sorry, I'm new to the site haha

quoted for posterity.

True story. Do not start picking fabric for letter shirts until a chapter decides you're worthy of them.

I'm rooting for.... OTTER!!! but my second pick iss..... Turtle :)

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Good discussions. Looking forward to a happy ending!

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As we stated, you CAN be released from all the sororities (i.e. not get any invites back to any of them) at any point in time during recruitment. If that happens, you don't get a bid.

There is only one school in the country with NPC groups that guarantees a bid to anyone PARTICIPATING in rush, and it isn't yours (it only has three sororities).

Please quit trying to prove that we're wrong, because we're not.

Hi Izzygirl,

Nobody here is saying it, but around Greek Chat, people tend to know different recruitments pretty well. I mean, I don't KNOW where you're rushing, but I could make a pretty good guess if I wanted to. Which I would never do publicly here. But if I'm right, then yeah, it isn't a super competitive recruitment, but I know PNMs (few, but some) who for various reasons come out on the other side of recruitment feeling like they've been whooped upside the head, as my Daddy says. The point is, 33girl is right, and others are right, even when the Greek office sings to the heavens that everything will work out, things can go wrong during recruitment, on both sides, mentally, logistically, physically, emotionally. Otherwise you have a really good attitude about keeping an open mind and trying to find a home, so it isn't that anyone is trying to bring you down; we just know it is best to go into recruitment with a positive and optimistic outlook but without any sense of certainty in any respect. That's all. We wish you best of luck.

LB

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Oooookay, Sweet Cheeks. Post away. We're all ears.

That's EXACTLY why I and other people have posted the things we have - because Greek life offices and sorority members sometimes do give out incorrect information. The fact that you're even using phrases like "guaranteed bid" shows that either you've been given wrong info or you're interpreting it wrong. It's not about trying to make you feel bad, it's about trying to clear things up so your rush period is a successful one.

You were told a fact that is true for ANY NPC sorority rush (except one) and basically responded multiple times "well I know more than you do because I go to school here and I live with sorority sisters and nanny nanny boo boo." After that kind of attitude, sorry, I'm going to get a little bit snarky.

As far as dissecting...you did the same thing to AlwaysSAI's post.

Have a fun rush, I guess.

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Anyway. If anyone reading this has any advice about my previous question regarding appropriate tops to wear on the casual dress day, i'd appreciate it! :) Would a cute t-shirt be alright?

Despite your previous bitchiness (I'll chalk it up to pre-rush jitters), I'll bite. I would generally stay away from t-shirts, especially graphic tees and ones with any sort of branding. I would say you're better off wearing a cute blouse or a cardigan.

+1
But I would ask around and check on wearing jeans... maybe go for a casual skirt.
But definetly no tshirts...

When I hear casual, I think nice blouse and capris or a casual sundress, but then I went to school in the SEC. Did they give you a booklet with example outfits or anything?

Best of luck to you! No fashion advice from me - everything I know is from the 80's and 90's.

izzygirl, I would love to hear your impressions as you go through recruitment. Best of luck in finding that perfect sorority home for you!

what would your sorority friends recommend? since they are on your campus, they would know best what works in the wardrobe department.

none of us are trying to be rude either(at least initially). many of us work with collegiate chapters in one capacity or another, and we have seen lots of recruitments come and go.

we understand that most of the time, greek life offices are on the ball and give only correct information, but we also understand that sometimes student volunteers are staffing the front desk/answering the phone/responding to email, and they are not always up to snuff on the correct information.

i am not knocking your rho gamma roommate, since i don't know what school you go to and therefore do not know anything about the rho gamma selection process or their training, but i have personally heard rho gammas at several different universities tell pnms that they must list all the chapters on their bid card whose parties the pnm attended for prefs or the computer would kick out her name and she would be bidless. that is soooooo wrong, yet to this day, some rho gammas continue to repeat that very statement. this is why we don't just accept rho gamma advice right off the bat.

a few years ago, at another school, the panhellenic vp for recruitment told everyone, in a speech about recruitment to incoming freshmen, that they recommended the girls try to secure recommendations to every sorority(good information on that campus) and then added that the recommendations had to come from an alumna of a chapter on that campus(terribly wrong information! a recommendation can come from any alumna in good standing of that particular sorority, no matter where she attended college).

that is why we are skeptical about information provided from collegiate sorority members, panhellenic offices and rho gammas, no offense intended.